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December 10

English aspiration

Are English plosives [p, t, k] unaspirated (tenuis) at the end of words or just after [s]? For example is pit [pʰɪtʰ] or [pʰɪt]? --40bus (talk) 18:41, 10 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Their default pronunciation at the ends of words is usually described as "unreleased". If a word is pronounced in an emphatic way in isolation, then word-final voiceless stops can be given a slight release, in which case they are generally aspirated... AnonMoos (talk) 20:48, 10 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. There's an IPA diacritic to indicate "unreleased" -- it's Unicode character U031A "Combining Left Angle Above" (can't paste it in right now for technical reasons). AnonMoos (talk) 21:03, 10 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

P.P.S. HTML/wikicode syntax for rendering Unicode characters by code is & # x hex ; For example, p&#x31a ; produces p̚. No such user (talk) 09:48, 12 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Is [s] only sound which can be first sound in combination with [p, t, k]? --40bus (talk) 06:34, 12 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The t at the end of pit may be unreleased, but it isn't necessarily unreleased. But it is definitely always unaspirated. As for consonants before [p t k], loanwords (mostly from Yiddish and German) can have [ʃ], e.g. spiel, shtetl, shkedei marak. —Mahāgaja · talk 10:53, 12 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

English voiceless stops are often realised as ejective consonants in final position, especially /k/. See this video from Geoff Lindsey: [1] – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 11:55, 12 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent reference. I only recently discovered Lindsey's YouTube channel a few months ago, and it is by far the best English phonology source I have found. It's presented in a way that anyone can understand his stuff without having any background in linguistics. --Jayron 32 13:04, 12 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]